Walking out of Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson last May at Cannes, I felt like it was the closest the director had come to making an artistic manifesto. Having seen it again, I’m even more convinced. Jarmusch first arrived in New York back in the 1970s with dreams of becoming a poet,…
Like its subject, the man who took McDonald’s from a single burger shop to a globe-straddling child-fattener, John Lee Hancock’s The Founder can’t stop selling. The first fast-food kitchen, set up in 1953 by the solemn McDonald brothers in San Bernardino, gets celebrated here as rousingly as John Glenn’s first…
One of the quasi-bohemians in Mike Mills’ gauzy 20th Century Women loves to document ephemera, taking photos of everything she owns. A similar instinct — archiving as art — guides Mills’ movie itself, a trip back in time in which era-specific talismans substitute for genuine thought. Though big feels glut…
Maybe it’s a just a sign of the Blumhouse-era horror-movie world we find ourselves in, but there’s something refreshing about a scare flick that (a) actually shows you its monster occasionally and (b) gives you a definite reason to be afraid of it. Hiding things in shadows to enhance audience…
The 2017 Miami Jewish Film Festival (MJFF) begins tonight, and from the opening screening in Aventura to the festival closing at O Cinema Miami Shores January 26, there are plenty of worthwhile films to catch. Choosing just a few always requires some tough decision-making, so why not let New Times help? Here are our top picks for what to check out at the festival.
For 34 years, Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival has brought international cinema to the Magic City, but this year, a homegrown talent will step into the spotlight. Blake Jenner, a Miami-born-and-raised actor best known for his role on Fox’s Glee, will compete for this year’s Jordan Ressler Screenwriting Award when the festival presents the world premiere of Billy Boy.
Thanks to a bitter election and seemingly endless culture war, last year was a roller coaster, and the films of 2016 reflect those ups and downs, with surprising results. It’s to be expected that lauded movies such as The Lobster, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, and Fences would become awards-season…
Near the end of Underworld, the 2003 film that launched the popular (and profitable) horror franchise, Viktor (Bill Nighy), king of the vampires, tries to kill the werewolf (a.k.a. Lycan) lover of his protégé, Selene (Kate Beckinsale), and she is not pleased. Grabbing a sword, Selene leaps straight up and…
It’s a question the movies ask again and again: How should a person grieve? In Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson’s slow-burn pseudo-mystery Claire in Motion, a talented mathematics professor named Claire Hunger (Betsy Brandt) realizes her amateur survivalist husband Paul (Chris Beetem) might not be coming home from his…
For better and for worse, Peter Berg has found his genre. After oscillating between sports (Friday Night Lights), superheroes (Hancock) and even board games (Battleship) without much distinction, the writer, director, producer and actor has made a loose trilogy in which Mark Wahlberg reenacts recent tales of American heroism. Lone…
Somewhere inside the 128-minute Live by Night is a reasonably solid 168-minute movie struggling to get out. No, that’s not a typo: You can sense the contours of an absorbing story as writer/director/star Ben Affleck’s slapdash and fragmented assemblage limps along. Most of the pieces are there, but they remain…
The made-in-Miami film Moonlight took home one of the Golden Globes’ biggest awards last night: the statue for Best Motion Picture – Drama, the grand finale of the ceremony. It was a relief to many critics and fans of the film, who’d begun to fear it would be shut out…
In the ’80s and ’90s, there were action movies. They starred muscly guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, or martial artists from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Cynthia Rothrock, or actors who were dedicated to the physical demands of the genre, like Bruce Willis or Wesley Snipes. They mostly told…
Almost all of the history of American movies flows into Steven Spielberg, and the movies that have come since can’t help but be in response. As a storyteller and as a cultural figure, his closest precedent isn’t John Ford or David Lean, but Dickens, another age’s popular titan, beloved more…
New year, new us! JK, new year, same ol’ us: watching TV and hiding in a hole from the bitter January cold and impending doom. The only solution? Watching all the television! You can take the day of the inauguration off to protest, but I expect you back under the…
For 75 years, the U.S. has dominated the production of World War II action comedies. There’s Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat (1959), and then exquisite ensembles in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and Inglourious Basterds (2009), among many others. We’re such experts…
What does it take for a woman to win the trust it takes to become an action director? For Anna Foerster, it took two decades, an expert’s knowledge of visual effects and cinematography and a directing gig on key episodes of a cult television show — Starz’s Outlander. Now she’s…
For fans of Billy Corben and the content that his Miami-based Rakontur Studios continues to kick out, this latest bit of Twitter news will be music to their ears: A third installment of Cocaine Cowboys, Rakontur’s Miami-centric illegal-drug-trade series, is in the works. The series could even hit a small screen near you within the year.
Like many people after Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing on Tuesday, December 27, I was moved to revisit Postcards From the Edge, the Mike Nichols–directed film that Fisher adapted from her own novel. This was the sole feature screenwriting credit for the actress-novelist, despite the fact that she was for decades…
“With all respect, sir, may I ask, who are you?” “What you see before you is a man, a simple monk.” “Are you the Lord Buddha?” “I believe I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you…
The entire time Gianfranco Rosi is talking, he’s drawing. Using a graphite pencil against an unlined notebook, the Italian documentary filmmaker instinctively makes quick sketches to illustrate his ideas and anecdotes. Counting off the number of windows on a ship, he draws three little squares. Talking about the deathly Mediterranean…
There are two distinct movies in Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, and you could say that somewhere in between them lies the real one. The director, an Italian documentarian whose observational films demonstrate a formal rigor that often brings them close to experimental cinema and installation work, has trained his…
